Month: November 2003

Ravenwood has a post which features an incredulous exchange between Paula “Zipppppppp” Zahn and Tucker Carlson wherein they discuss why people under thirty don’t think the Iraq invasion and occupation are a bad thing. Carlson zooms in with this insight:

It does surprise me. I mean, I think the theme throughout all of these numbers is hopefulness. People under 30 just are much more optimistic about America’s future. They feel more secure in the job market with the economy. They think things are getting better. They think Iraq is going better than people over 30 do.

How can that be? Don’t they realize it’s Vietnam!

Pardon me while I shake the doughnuts off of my cluebat.

Note to big thoughtless media players out there: Vietnam is not an apt or immediate metaphor for anyone under forty. I was born in 1972, and I was 3 when Saigon fell. I don’t remember any of it. Someone who’s forty today will have some preteen memories of it, but thirty year olds were born in 1973 and don’t remember the Miracle on Ice, either.

You might as well compare the Iraq invasion to the Crimean War. Your average thirty year old has the same immediate access to each. In a book. So just hitch your trousers a little higher, show us some more of those sexxxy black socks under your sandals, and go back to your regular poor Boomer behavior of worrying that you’ll have a single, non-Federally funded financial responsibility between the end of your career and the end of your retirement.

Thank you. That is all.

Headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Criticism of Inner Belt project angers Olivette! Anything but that!

What’s the beef?

Les Sterman, the executive director of the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council and professional funding teat-sucker, said that the federal government really doesn’t need to spend $24 million dollars on an interchange where I-170 meets Olive because it doesn’t have as much traffic as previously predicted. This, of course, upset the professional funding teat-suckers in Olivette, where the $24 million dollar interchange would have been added.

“Show me a community that doesn’t want $24 million in federal funding and I will show you Olivette, because that is the only one,” said [Larry] Gerstein [director of the Olivette Community Connection].

While Gerstein acknowledges Sterman has no financial stake in whether the interchange is built, he insists Sterman should not be using his position to evaluate the merits of the interchange, which is a topic of local debate.

Because, obviously, the taxpayers in Mississippi and Wyoming should alleviate non-existent (sorry, light) traffic congestion in a relatively affluent suburb of St. Louis.

Show me a community that would let the pork return to its source and I’ll show you Olivette, who is not one.

Finally, the credit reporting agencies are putting your credit information directly into the hands of third world workers unbound by United States laws. That’s efficiency in identity theft.

Your paranoia shidoshi recommends you open as many credit cards as you can in the next three weeks, max them out, buy a new Porsche, get a mortgage, and have a ball. Remember Brewster’s Millions. Whatever you can consume, creditors cannot seize. So buy a couple cases of good wine, some exceptional chocolate, charter a jet, and fly a couple dozen friends to the Bunny Ranch. But don’t pay the bills!

You see, once you’ve reached a point that no one will give you change much less a credit card, no one will give someone who steals your identity a credit card, either!

Sometimes, the easy answers elude us, but that’s why I am the shidoshi, and you are the student.

There is liberation in the limitation of paying cash.

A peaceful, frolicking lion in the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Missouri, kills the female lion that shared its cage.

It’s the circle of life, it’s the wheel of fortune, and the lioness landed on Bankrupt.

These are the animals to whose level some in our society would like to return.

Appease North Korea….make our children pay for our perfidy.

Thanks, bud. Go back to private life now, and keep your bad ideas–which didn’t work so well when you implemented them–to yourself.

(Link seen on Drudge.)

Apparently, there’s some feel-good story circulating that tells of how ordinary people supported soldiers on leave by giving up their seats on flights out of BWI to the traveling soldiers. Hmm. Here’s the story, according to Snopes:

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope that you will spare me a few minutes of your time to tell you about something that I saw on Monday, October 27.

I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was coming home on Sunday. As you may recall, Los Angeles International Airport was closed on Sunday, October 26, because of the fires that affected air traffic control. Accordingly, my flight, and many others, were canceled and I wound up spending a night in Baltimore.

My story begins the next day. When I went to check in at the United counter Monday morning I saw a lot of soldiers home from Iraq. Most were very young and all had on their desert camouflage uniforms. This was as change from earlier, when they had to buy civilian clothes in Kuwait to fly home. It was a visible reminder that we are in a war. It probably was pretty close to what train terminals were like in World War II.

Many people were stopping the troops to talk to them, asking them questions in the Starbucks line or just saying “Welcome Home.” In addition to all the flights that had been canceled on Sunday, the weather was terrible in Baltimore and the flights were backed up. So, there were a lot of unhappy people in the terminal trying to get home, but nobody that I saw gave the soldiers a bad time.

By the afternoon, one plane to Denver had been delayed several hours. United personnel kept asking for volunteers to give up their seats and take another flight. They weren’t getting many takers. Finally, a United spokeswoman got on the PA and said this, “Folks. As you can see, there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days of leave and we’re trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more time in an airport then they have to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you’re doing, we are here for you and we love you.”

At that, the entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary people, a cross-section of America, broke into sustained and heart-felt applause. The soldiers looked surprised and very modest. Most of them just looked at their boots. Many of us were wiping away tears.

And, yes, people lined up to take the later flight and all the soldiers went to Denver on that flight.

That little moment made me proud to be an American, and also told me why we will win this war.

If you want to send my little story on to your friends and family, feel free. This is not some urban legend. I was there, I was part of it, I saw it happen.

Sounds nice and patriotic, but let’s zoom back into the announcement from United, shall we?

“Folks. As you can see, there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days of leave and we’re trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more time in an airport then they have to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you’re doing, we are here for you and we love you.“

Let’s separate the United “we” from the American people “we” for a moment, and translate that shall incensed blogger “we”?

We, a failing corporation in a failing industry now offer some shoddy customer service; as we, said failing corporation, have overbooked the flight to maximize our corporate revenue at the expense of the convenience of our customers, now ask you to give up your tickets to our customers because we American citizens all want to support our troops, right?

What a cynical, manipulative bunch of hooey.